Customer Reviews

Do It Yourself Deck Designer

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1 star:		(5)

 

 

This program is good if you want to use one of the pre-existing designs on it. If you plan on building a custom deck it is pretty much useless. You are unable to make the angles you want and you are unable to add specific designs that are fairly common. It is difficult to use and is not worth the money spent. You are better off drawing a custom deck by hand.

I paid $29.99, but Deck Designer would be overpriced at $2.99. A highschool student could create a better program over a weekend. You can use a pencil, ruler and paper as easily. No way I would build a deck this program creates. It actually put overlapping posts in nearly the same hole, and a third post only inches away. A "door" is literally a hole in the wall. Only one 3D view and it's not in perspective so it looks wrong. There is very little you can do with this worthless program. The only good thing it is easy to use. Too easy! And you still get nothing you can build. Don't waste your money. Even 1 star is too high a rating for this product.

Not much more I can say other than this software was of zero value for me building my deck. If you really want it, look at home depot for a down load for much, much cheaper. I think the web designer at Lowes provides the same value as this software....but it is FREE!!!!!!

After spending several weeks planning the new deck on my house, I thought it would be nice to plug these plans into a CAD program of some type which could then help me estimate materials, etc.

I hunted around for a while, and after reading several reviews, the best program I could find was Big Hammer's DIY Deck Designer. I bought the downloadable version, and had it installed and running shortly thereafter. My first impression was positive. Within a couple of minutes, I had thrown together a sample deck with stairs, etc.

Unfortunately, the program doesn't do much more than this. With some wrestling, I was able to get it to create a landing for my stairs, but it would not let me shape the landing. It also doesn't support decks higher than 96", which coincidentally is just shy of the 98" deck I'm building.

To add insult to injury, the Home Depot integration does not work in Canada. The program can successfully query the parts inventory from my local store, but it cannot retrieve the corresponding prices. I contacted Big Hammer's customer support, and they say that they know about the problem, but that Home Depot has no plans of fixing it. This would have been nice to know beforehand.

Even if you accept the limitations the program imposes on your design, you still can't use this tool to effectively design your deck. The 3D view is pretty, but cannot be rotated. You are able to view the layout of the posts, beams, and joists, but everything else is left to your imagination. The program will tell you the final list of materials needed to build the deck they planned, but there are very few hints about how they plan on you assembling the parts.

Overall, this program is a big disappointment. I have given up on a software solution, and designed the whole thing with pencil and paper. If you are looking for a good do-it-yourself reference manual for building decks, I highly recommend Black & Decker's The Complete Guide To Decks.

I agree with other comments and requested (and received) refund from software company.